The Regret Of Selling Cards And Watching Them Spike

May 29, 2026 Cliff Daigle Leave a comment

Today, I want to go over a feeling that many of us have gone through.

You had a plan for a spec, you bought in at the right time, and then just as predicted, it went up. You posted at the perfect price at the most opportune moment, and locked in a significant profit, and did that process over and over, netting yourself the funds needed to move on to the next target.

And the card kept going up.

How do you deal with that? Why did it happen? Are there ways to mitigate it? Should we mitigate it? Today is less about the picks and more about the mentality, so come with me and let’s review what success means.

This topic is timely for me, as just a month ago at MagicCon Vegas, I sold off a stack of my leftover English-language Hatsune Miku cards. I’d already made significant profits by repackaging the four individual lairs and selling them as a group on Ebay. (I was in at $160 per foil set, and selling at $600+, a most delightful margin!) I had a dozen or so assorted Lairs that I’d cracked, looking for a Snapcaster, and I sold off the individual foils and nonfoils from every set other than the original Sakura Superstar.

Again, all of this was profit on top of profit, and I got $23 for each of six Rainbow Foil Miku, Divine Diva, a card that was selling for around $45 as of a month ago.

In case you didn’t hear, someone’s Goblinstorm deck was shipped with what appears to be a Hatsune Miku Commander deck, with a reskinned Trostani, Selesnya’s Voice as the only card visible through the sealed plastic. As a result, everything that is Miku and is in green or white has gone up like mad, and the cheapest copy of that same Elspeth is now just under $100 on TCGPlayer.

This is only the most recent (and therefore most painful) example of a phenomenon that absolutely will happen to you the longer you’re buying and selling something. It happens with stocks, it happens with real estate, it happens in crypto. There’s no single name for the phenomenon, which is interesting, as I thought folks in the stock market had a cute phrase for just about everything, like a ‘dead cat bounce’ or ‘economic moat’ or ‘diamond hands.’ In the ProTrader Discord, I’m open to coining a phrase, if you’ve got a fun idea get it in there and let’s make it work.

Let’s start with the feelings that follow a post-sale spike.

First of all: You won! You had a plan, you did it, and you made money. Hell yes! High Five! Buy yourself that sweet foil with the profits. Recognize that you did it. Other people might make more, and as time passes, you might feel bad about what you made and when, but wallowing in regret will only lead to you making bad decisions, like not selling when you could make a profit.

Magic finance is littered with examples of holding too long, and most spikes represent opportunities for you to sell and make your profits. Let’s take a recent example of a Commander who made an enormous amount of cards spike: Hashaton, Scarab’s Fist. This was a card that premiered in Aetherdrift’s Commander decks in January 2025, and immediately made a big splash. One of the cards that went wild was Tortured Existence, a Stronghold common that went from $3 to a top price of $14.

The reason you sell into a spike is because there’s no guarantee that the prices stay high. Attention moves on. Tortured Existence has gotten a Secret Lair printing since its spike and can now be had around $5 a copy. If you have a $3 card go up to $14, you set your prices at just over $10, make your 3x profit, and move on. You’re gaining cash that you can use on your next spec, or roll it into value for a Commander deck, or remodel your kitchen.

Please remember a tough lesson to learn personally: Your cards have a ‘worth’ only when you go to sell them. The moment you do sell them, that’s when the profit is locked in. Owning a card that is spiking feels great, but if you don’t move to liquidate the card, you run the risk of it settling back down at the post-spike price.

The right time to sell is tricky. Let’s stick with the Miku example and focus on foil Elvish Mystic, the bonus inclusion for the first Miku drop. It was at $30 or so, and here’s the current set of prices for the evening of 5/28:

If you have one copy in a Commander deck, you should be tempted to sell. This is a huge jump and not one I’d expect to stay high. I would respect your desire to sell at $50, and I would understand your desire to list at $96.69 and wait a bit. We don’t even know when the Miku deck will come out, and as we’re seeing in the midst of Goblinstorm sales, selling into the original preview hype can mean less profit than selling when people get cards in hand. The correct play with the Mystic could be to wait until people get the Miku deck and then more folks are in on the buying.

We can’t know for sure what the right play is, and that feels brutal. We are conditioned to avoid the situations that make us feel bad, including the feeling of selling too early. However, there are two concrete plans you can implement to help prevent this set of negative feelings, neither of which works after the fact.

System #1: Make the plan and trust the plan.

It’s remarkably easy to have your emotions in a moment derail what is usually an orderly set of feelings. Buy the card, sell the card. When we start adding regret, though, and the potential of regret, things can really go off the rails. In poker, this is often referred to as being on tilt, where your emotions cloud your judgment like you’re Anakin about to slaughter some younglings.

When you make a plan ahead of time, you free yourself from that doubt and regret. Doesn’t matter if the card goes up or goes down, you got the profit you wanted and you had a plan for that profit! You are a success and doing better every time! Having a system, a set of preplanned sell points, allows you to worry less about what could be.

And if it looks like a card might keep going up, well, that leads to the other systematic approach.

System #2: Cover your entrance costs, and everything after that is free money.

This is how I approached the Miku cards. I’d already sold a ton of the cards, and I was way ahead on all of it. Whatever I got from these leftovers was just super bonus money, and should be viewed as a nice addition to the systematic profit I’ve already made happen.

The common variation on this is to buy a card, and when it spikes, immediately sell just enough to cover what you paid. After that, hold forever or sell immediately, and you’ll always be winning when it comes to your sales. This is a systematic approach, but allowing you to flex as the situation changes.

Whichever plan you have, I also want to tell you that the social aspect is big. It helps a lot to hear from other people that you did the thing and you did it well, even if there was more profit to be had. Some people like to buy cards and then never sell them, and down that path lies madness and storage units and lots of cobwebs covering mildewed boxes. Magic is turning into a game of churn, and if we want to maximize profits, we need to execute our plans and keep up with it all.

Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the co-host of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at an event and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

Uncategorized

Serialized Cards, Collectibles, and Rampant Growth

May 22, 2026 Cliff Daigle Leave a comment

You may or may not have noticed, but the collectibles market has never been more expensive, at least for the high-end stuff. I’m not a professional at anything but Magic, but I have the opportunity to talk to a lot of folks, and the consensus is that we’re in a time period where Magic and other collectibles are definitely riding high.

There’s a lot of reasons for this, and some immediate effects that we need to be aware of, plus some trends we can get on now.

The big indicator that started all of this for me was the growth in graded, or ‘slabbed’, Magic cards. This is something Magic players have been resistant to for a while, because we want to play with the cards, not just own them. There’s a large contingent of players who want to put their sweet card in a deck, and aren’t scared of shuffling a deck with cards that are each $500 or more.

Cube enthusiasts are probably the worst about this, and their only rivals are the Legacy/Vintage players who live for the chance to have a paper tournament and use their all-original decks.

However, the collectors are starting to take over, or at least spend like it. All sorts of stuff is getting rarer, or more ornate, from Lego sets that need a pallet rack to carry or sports cards with signed jersey pieces. There’s people using small-scale CT scanners to see what’s inside of packs, a giant technological leap over scooting the cards in a Revised pack up to the top and holding down the see-through portion.

Ebay’s sold listings for higher-end cards, especially ones that have been graded, have been ticking up higher and higher too. Ben Bateman recently documented his trade at MagicCon Vegas of more than $100,000 worth of cards for a slabbed, serialized copy of The One Ring’s poster foil. This is an outlier, but one worth looking at because it shows the overall trend. Rare cards in Magic, especially if they are rare AND powerful, can be incredibly expensive.

Let’s do a thought experiment. You have $40,000 and have to spend it on cards. Do you go for a Mint set of the Power 9 from Unlimited, plus some dual lands, or do you snag Golden Chocobo #41 off of eBay? I never thought I’d say this, but I’d rather have the Chocobo. The Power 9 are iconic for a section of Magic players, and the rarest of the rare still fetch a lot of money, but the collectors are branching into Magic and there’s more growth that could still come.

Magic collectibles, at least the ones that come in packs and are still game pieces, are either the Headliner sort, where they are mega-rare but we don’t know precisely how rare, or the serialized, where we’re told that it’s a xxx/500, as in the case of Bitterbloom Bearer or Emeritus of Ideation. Serialized is generally going to mean more expensive, when we look at the recent cards, as the xxx/500 cards are three to four times the price of the non-serialized Sothera, the Supervoid or even the Thanos art of The Soul Stone.

Serialized cards in Magic are trending up over the last couple of years, too. A lot of the Multiverse Legends serialized have more than doubled in the past 18-24 months, depending on the popularity of the card as a Commander. Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice was a $600 card when the set came out, and now there’s two copies on TCGPlayer, both at $2000+. I got in on some of the Dragons that are serialized a couple years ago, and they are up 50-500%.

Not all serialized have grown, though. A whole lot of the lesser-played Multiverse Legends haven’t grown, and there’s a lot of relatively cheap Brothers’ War Retro artifacts you could get.

The big question, though: What should we buy now, to cash in on this trend?

I think the best target at the moment is the Thanos Soul Stone. We’re about to get The Mind Stone copies in Marvel Super Heroes, and presumably, four more sets as Thanos completes the Infinity Gauntlet, which thanks to the movies, has been in the zeitgeist since it came out eight years ago. We’ve seen the earlier Mystical Archives go up to match the new ones, we’re neck-deep in assorted Wizard of Barge spikes thanks to the Goblinstorm deck, and I see no reason why the Infinity Stones wouldn’t follow suit.

I know that recommending a card going for $1,000-$1,500 is a big thing, and I haven’t put this pick on the cast. I just think that the completionists among Magic players (of which there are MANY) will want the full set and since the Cosmic foils are six-figure cards, the Thanos versions are the next best thing. You just know that there will be a big bonus for having all six when they print the Gauntlet.

I don’t think we’ll see huge spikes in the regular/regular foil versions of The Soul Stone this summer, but if we’re still doing this in three and a half years, I’ll want to stock up on those.

The other area that holds good growth potential is in the lesser-played serialized from Ravnica Remastered, Brothers’ War Retro, and the Multiverse Legends. More than sixty serialized cards, 500 each, and that meant a lot of serialized entering the market. The issue here is that the serialized cards are visually the same as the non-serialized, which is so lame compared to the Bitterbloom Bearer or the Emeritus. Hopefully Wizards keeps making the serialized cards a special art, too.

My favorite right now is Crypt Ghast serialized, as it’s in a ton of Commander decks but still not way up there, copies available online around $400. If that’s too much, there’s some barrel-scraping you can do, like a Tolsimir Wolfblood under $300, Radha, Coalition Warlord at $250 or a Seal of the Guildpact under $200. We’ve seen other instances where people just want anything from a group of cards but can’t get the best ones and start settling for their price range, and can cause a rising tide to lift all boats.

Finally, if there’s something you want for personal use, I’d tell you to go ahead and get it. The market is pretty unlikely to get softer for these, so if you can afford it, get it and enjoy it. I can tell you from experience that you’ll look at it with glee and joy.

Casual Fridays, Uncategorized

What to Buy for Six Commander Decks Releasing With Reality Fracture!

May 15, 2026 Cliff Daigle Leave a comment

There’s no end of stuff to keep up with, but you might have missed out on a piece of news regarding Reality Fracture’s release in October. We’re getting one specific deck for the Reality Fracture set, and then we’re going on a two-year throwback and breaking out the Foundations title for five mono-color entry-level Commander decks.

Speculating on upcoming Commander releases has been quite profitable for me over the last couple of years, so with six decks coming in this October time period, now is the perfect time to pick up a few cards. Let’s talk about each deck in turn.

There is a single deck with the Reality Fracture set, officially, focused on two themes: Tokens and warping. Let’s start with the tokens. We’re skipping green, so a lot of the token doublers are out, but not all of them! Most of these are pretty pricey or in the wrong IP, so the reprint risk is lower, though not zero.

Ocelot Pride ($66-$165) – The regular versions might give you a better return here, but we’re overdue for some major MH3 reprints.

Academy Manufactor ($12-$20) – It seems unlikely that a deck based around tokens would skip all three of these types.

Mirkwood Bats ($5-$10) – High risk of reprint in The Hobbit set, but we’ll see. That set is before Reality Fracture, at least.

Caretaker’s Talent ($8-$15) – Strong candidate to be in the deck, should double if it isn’t.

Rosie Cotton of South Lane ($3-$6) – Some kooky combos with this card, but just like the Bats, we might get a reprint just before.

Teysa Karlov ($45-$70) – This is focused on creature tokens, we’ll see if the deck does a lot of other such things.

Anointed Procession ($45-$80) – Probably too pricey to be in the deck, but another way overdue for a reprint.

Mondrak, Glory Dominus ($40-$90) – A tougher reprint, given the theme and mechanics, but might be a Special Guest?

Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation ($30-$60) – Same as above, really.

Elspeth, Storm Seeker ($45-$85) – Up to you if you want a basic or one of the sweet Halo versions, but the base is too pricey for Commander decks, generally.

Exalted Sunborn ($18-$40) – If Warp is indeed a theme to the deck, this might be doubly good and thus a perfect inclusion in the deck.

Warp Cards – All of these are pretty cheap as a base nonfoil, so I wouldn’t be shocked if they were all in the precon.

Haliya, Guided by Light ($3-$6) – Just a solid card, tough to go wrong.

Tannuk, Steadfast Second ($2-$9) – If warping is a theme, this should be on the menu.

Starfield Vocalist ($2-$70) – Seems like this is too good to leave off, but there’s only so much room.

Most amusingly, this set of decks is due to be released on 10/2, the same day as Reality Fracture and the Multiverse Reforged deck. The concept for this set of five decks is to be a reasonably priced entry point, something that they hope won’t get marked up from the base price of $30.

Gotta put on the speculation hat here: Other Commander decks listed on Amazon list that there’s some number of new-to-Magic cards in each deck, and this listing does not have such a notation. That, plus ‘Start Playing Commander Here’ and the presence of a single foil mythic, tells me that this set of decks is all reprints. Not just reprints, but cheap reprints, as this is designed to be a deck that stays cheap.

As such, with no new cards (I think! Could be wrong about this, but it makes sense!) then we’re looking at these decks and wondering what cards might get added to upgrade the lists. We’re talking about the section of players who think that it would be neat to have a Dinosaur deck, but never got around to buying/trading for enough cards to fill out a decklist.

For these decks, we’re looking for cards that are preferably too expensive in the base version to be in the deck, but still cheap enough that players would look for these to add to the deck. Feel free to go after special versions here.

Tramplesaurus Rex (Green Dinosaurs w/Ghalta)

Vaultborn Tyrant – If power matters, this is the perfect card and a $25 base inclusion is pretty unlikely to be in here.

Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant – The kind of card that makes a green player giddy, it’s more likely that the face commander is Ghalta, Primal Hunger, since ‘power matters.’

Invasion of Ikoria – This might be blacklisted as a too-complicated card for the introduction to the format, but a base price of $11 might be in the sweet spot.

Welcome To…// Jurassic Park – The card name is overdone, but the flavor and the fun couldn’t be higher.

Calling all Angels (White Angels w/Giada)

Avacyn, Angel of Hope – I especially love the movie poster foils here in the $45 range, and a lot of decks just fold to her greatness.

Battle Angels of Tyr – One of the most power-crept cards in existence, this goes amazingly with a turn-two Giada, Font of Hope.

Gisela, the Broken Blade and Bruna, the Fading Light – Bruna is cheap enough to be in the deck, but Gisela is $20 and I would expect to see the terrifying meld get a bump as Angels get hot again.

Radiant, Archangel – Being on the Reserved List means that she can’t get reprinted, and when the Angels Secret Lair deck came out in 2023, she spiked to $20+. Could happen again!

Starnheim Aspirant – This is a $9 uncommon, due to the lack of reprints since 2022. The price will crater if it’s in the deck, or double if it’s not.

Keen Engineering (Blue artifacts/Thopters w/Sai)

Leonardo da Vinci – He’s cheap enough, but being part of the Assassin’s Creed IP probably means he avoids a reprint. We’ve seen some light reprints of Universes Beyond, but this is in an odd space since it’s a real historical figure. Could make a mint, could get wrecked.

Urza, Lord High Artificer – I wouldn’t be shocked to see people make the swap for him over Sai, Master Thopterist, but Urza ought to see a bump as people include him in the deck.

Arcum Dagsson – Do not ever let someone untap with this card. Ever.

Uthros Research Craft – This is cheap enough, I’m just not sure they would have set this as a reprint so soon.

Ashnod’s Altar – If you’re making artifact tokens, you’ll want one of these.

Wretched Ranks (Black Zombies w/Gisa)

Undead Warchief – I’m listing this here but I think it’s a very strong candidate to be in the deck. It’s gotten no significant printings since Planechase in 2009, and putting a lot of them out there will lower the price a lot. However, it’s currently pushing $15, and if that’s too high for the ethos of the decks, I could see this doubling.

Lord of the Undead – See above, just $10 not $15.

Ayara, First of Locthwain – Another $10 card, just amazing if you’re having a stream of Zombie tokens coming and going.

Crypt Ghast – Gotta remind everyone that reminder text doesn’t count for color identity.

Mikaeus, the Unhallowed – Too expensive to be in the deck, utterly ridiculous in any Zombie theme.

Grave Pact – No printings since Enchanting Tales, just going up!

Reign of Dragons (Red Dragons w/Lathliss)

Dracogenesis – I don’t run this in my Ur-Dragon deck, but damn it’ll be great for Lathliss decks.

Utvara Hellkite – Cast Dragons, make Dragons. Attack with Dragons, make Dragons.

Zirilan of the Claw – Like clockwork, when a Dragon deck comes out, his price goes up. It’s been over $30 in the past, and as a Reserved List card, we know he’s not getting reprinted.

Terror of the Peaks – We just got the ugliest version possible in a Secret Lair, so that might be the cheapest play here.

Casual Fridays

The Previews and Categories for Magic: the Gathering X The Hobbit

May 8, 2026 Cliff Daigle Leave a comment

We don’t have a lot of specifics about The Hobbit set yet, and that’s fine, since there’s still all of Marvel Super Heroes to get through. What we do know is enough to do some early preparations, and sometimes, forethought is all that’s needed to make some wonderful profits.

Let’s go through the categories, then some specific cards.

Borderless Classic Artist Cards

This set is already off to a great start, with reprints of original LOTR cards coming. We’re told of Tom Bombadil, Sauron, the Dark Lord, and of course, The One Ring. There will be 40 of these cards, and there’s nonfoil plus surge foil in the collector boosters, with traditional foils being in a special one-card Box Topper pack.

It’s important to note that these are not exclusive to the Box Toppers, as has been the case in the past. The Toppers are merely a bonus, something you get with Play Booster and Collector Booster boxes alike. If the special packs were the only way to get shiny cards, then we’d have some difficulties, but two foil versions means we can be reasonable about this.

We should expect most of the popular LOTR cards here: Bowmasters, Delighted Halfling, Mithril Coat, etc. I’ll be interested to see if there’s nine more Nazgul for us to collect, but mainly, I want to buy all of these when supply maxes out. Will it take another three years for us to get The Silmarillion and a third printing of these cards? Perhaps, but I surely bought enough Halflings at under $10 to resell at $25 to make me interested in maxing out known staples.

The One Ring having cribbed art, and admitted to it, is not going to affect the price all that much of this new version. It’ll be the cheapest. I expect older versions to go up in price some, since they are, by far, better looking. Even without Frazier having copy-flip-pasted the Ring itself, the background is dull and everything else is better. I’ll absolutely be buying these for later resell, but I’m under no illusions regarding the tiers of demand here.

Dwarven Language Cards

So far we know about Arcane Signet, and there will be four more. Your guess is as good as mine, Signet would not have been on my list as a card that “captures a moment from The Hobbit, such as this Arcane Signet which depicts the mark carved into the door of Bilbo’s home.”

We will get more of these, but I’m not fixated yet unless there’s a Dwarven Rhystic Study lurking.

Book Cover Cards

This is a lot cooler than the other covers we’ve seen, like the D&D module books and the like. These are legible, and it’s obvious what they are. I personally don’t like cards where they are pre-aged to look like the corners are already jacked up, but that’s just me. We’re only getting ten of these cards, with two of them known already.

Dragon Hoard Frame Cards

The detail of having the red version missing a scale is top-notch, the sort of thing they do very well in a lot of the Universes Beyond products. (Personal favorite: Shadowfax having the meaning of haste!)

We’re getting 25 of these cards, with three of them previewed, and this should be the sort of thing that performs well. Important to note that there’s both nonfoil and regular foil of these in Play Boosters, with the Collector Boosters getting the Surge Foil versions.

Glittering Gold Smaug

They didn’t serialize this card, but they announced that there will be ‘approximately’ 500 copies of this card. On one hand, I am deeply suspicious of this methodology. They were allowed to serialize lots of things three years ago, why not slap a number on here? Further than that, why didn’t we get an approximate number for the super-chase Sothera, the Supervoid, or the Headliner Turtles, or The Mind Stone, and so on?

And on the other hand, I feel like Smeagol looking at the Precious for the first time. I wants it, yes I do, and I’m aware that I’ll have to pay an exorbitant amount to get it. The TMNT Headliners are several grand, but with them publicizing the amount of Glittering Gold Smaug out there, the big collectors will be all over this and copies will not last long in the market. I’m doubtful that any will get sold on TCGPlayer, but we’ll see. My expectation is that this is $4k+ out of the gate and rises from there. I wish I was kidding.

Individual Cards

Smaug is a fantastic card, one that fits well into a wide range of decks but definitely amazing in those that are Treasure-focused. Imagine Smaug into Goldspan? Boom! I appreciate that he’s four power and hasty and low costed. I’m becoming resigned to not owning the Glittering version with each of these words.

Thorin is a perfect inclusion in every Equipment deck, giving a lot of mana for equipping, plus a big smack to a creature. Don’t forget that he can target himself too, so hopefully one of your equipment grants haste.

The Arkenstone and My Precious are solid cards that have good Adventure spells, but since the Adventures have colors, it restricts where these cards can go. A lot of decks would love the combo, though.

Bilbo, Thief in the Night is going to form some interesting combos. Mana reduction for the Commander is good, but from the yard, from exile, from foretell or even from Adventures is remarkably flexible. I don’t know what the endgame is for this card, but it’s got a great first ability and a very useful secondary, so there will indeed be some craziness.

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